Dining Out: Five London Small Plates I've Known and Loved

Ladies and gentlemen let's hear it for crisps.

I’ve been working on something about what I’ve perceived as a bit of a sea change in the small plates world recently (keep your eyes peeled for this earth-shaking journalism). As a result, over the last week or so, I have been reminiscing about especially good ones I’ve encountered over the years, so I thought that for this week’s paid post, I’d share them with you.

Small plates, I think, get a bad rap. The way the phrase is bandied around tends to point towards a certain annoying social milieu which cares a lot about Instagram – I am myself part of this demographic, and have been guilty of lazily using “small plates” as a way of delineating what they’re (we’re?) into – but realistically, the idea of a menu of sharing dishes has become so pervasive that in restaurant terms at least, this is just in large part how we eat now.

I think because they’re everywhere, then, my criteria for a good small plate is that there should be something surprising about it. The idea of them and what they typically consist of – sourdough “toasts”, burrata* – has become so passé that the good ones riff on those ideas, or ignore them entirely. Remember that Croque Monsieur I had at Bar Levan a few weeks ago? That was a great small plate. Below are some more:

CRISPS at Agora / Spring Roll Wrapper Crisps at Good Measure

I love it when a small plate has been considered with its relationship to boozing in mind, and therefore I love it when a small plate is just: crisps.

When you’re making a big meal at home which you know is going to take a while, is there anything better than cracking over a massive fucking share bag of crisps and having a bottle of wine while you fanny about at the hob? There is not. So when a restaurant offers me the chance to replicate this without the part where I have to actually cook, I am all in. Agora in Borough and Good Measure in Tooting both do crisps particularly well: at Agora (the ones in the photo), they come to your table hot, and are an excellent pairing for the million amazing dips on their menu, which is entirely based around sharing, and at Good Measure, the bar underneath Daddy Bao, they give you a bowl of spring roll wrappers with your cocktail, as if to simply say “enjoy yourself.” 10/10.